The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 3/Lectures from Colombo to Almora/The Vedanta in all its phases
THE VEDANTA IN ALL ITS PHASES
(Delivered in Calcutta)
Away back, where no recorded history, nay, not even the dim light of
tradition, can penetrate, has been steadily shining the light, sometimes
dimmed by external circumstances, at others effulgent, but undying and
steady, shedding its lustre not only over India, but permeating the whole
thought-world with its power, silent, unperceived, gentle, yet omnipotent,
like the dew that falls in the morning, unseen and unnoticed, yet bringing
into bloom the fairest of roses: this has been the thought of the
Upanishads, the philosophy of the Vedanta. Nobody knows when it first came
to flourish on the soil of India. Guesswork has been vain. The guesses,
especially of Western writers, have been so conflicting that no certain date
can be ascribed to them. But we Hindus, from the spiritual standpoint, do
not admit that they had any origin. This Vedanta, the philosophy of the
Upanishads, I would make bold to state, has been the first as well as the
final thought on the spiritual plane that has ever been vouchsafed to man.
From this ocean of the Vedanta, waves of light from time to time have been
going Westward and Eastward. In the days of yore it travelled Westward and
gave its impetus to the mind of the Greeks, either in Athens, or in
Alexandria, or in Antioch. The Sânkhya system must clearly have made its
mark on the minds of the ancient Greeks; and the Sankhya and all other
systems in India hail that one authority, the Upanishads, the Vedanta. In
India, too, in spite of all these jarring sects that we see today and all
those that have been in the past, the one authority, the basis of all these
systems, has yet been the Upanishads, the Vedanta. Whether you are a
dualist, or a qualified monist, an Advaitist, or a Vishishtâdvaitist, a
Shuddhâdvaitist, or any other Advaitist, or Dvaitist, or whatever you may
call yourself, there stand behind you as authority, your Shastras, your
scriptures, the Upanishads. Whatever system in India does not obey the
Upanishads cannot be called orthodox, and even the systems of the Jains and
the Buddhists have been rejected from the soil of India only because they
did not bear allegiance to the Upanishads. Thus the Vedanta, whether we know
it or not, has penetrated all the sects in India, and what we call Hinduism,
this mighty banyan with its immense, almost infinite ramifications, has been
throughout interpenetrated by the influence of the Vedanta. Whether we are
conscious of it or not, we think the Vedanta, we live in the Vedanta, we
breathe the Vedanta, and we die in the Vedanta, and every Hindu does that.
To preach Vedanta in the land of India, and before an Indian audience,
seems, therefore, to be an anomaly. But it is the one thing that has to be
preached, and it is the necessity of the age that it must be preached. For,
as I have just told you, all the Indian sects must bear allegiance to the
Upanishads; but among these sects there are many apparent contradictions.
Many times the great sages of yore themselves could not understand the
underlying harmony of the Upanishads. Many times, even sages quarrelled, so
much so that it became a proverb that there are no sages who do not differ.
But the time requires that a better interpretation should be given to this
underlying harmony of the Upanishadic texts, whether they are dualistic, or
non-dualistic, quasi-dualistic, or so forth. That has to be shown before the
world at large, and this work is required as much in India as outside of
India; and I, through the grace of God, had the great good fortune to sit at
the feet of one whose whole life was such an interpretation, whose life, a
thousandfold more than whose teaching, was a living commentary on the texts
of the Upanishads, was in fact the spirit of the Upanishads living in a
human form. Perhaps I have got a little of that harmony; I do not know
whether I shall be able to express it or not. But this is my attempt, my
mission in life, to show that the Vedantic schools are not contradictory,
that they all necessitate each other, all fulfil each other, and one, as it
were, is the stepping-stone to the other, until the goal, the Advaita, the
Tat Tvam Asi, is reached. There was a time in India when the Karma Kânda had
its sway. There are many grand ideals, no doubt, in that portion of the
Vedas. Some of our present daily worship is still according to the precepts
of the Karma Kanda. But with all that, the Karma Kanda of the Vedas has
almost disappeared from India. Very little of our life today is bound and
regulated by the orders of the Karma Kanda of the Vedas. In our ordinary
lives we are mostly Paurânikas or Tântrikas, and, even where some Vedic
texts are used by the Brahmins of India, the adjustment of the texts is
mostly not according to the Vedas, but according to the Tantras or the
Puranas. As such, to call ourselves Vaidikas in the sense of following the
Karma Kanda of the Vedas, I do not think, would be proper. But the other
fact stands that we are all of us Vedantists. The people who call themselves
Hindus had better be called Vedantists, and, as I have shown you, under that
one name Vaidantika come in all our various sects, whether dualists or
non-dualists.
The sects that are at the present time in India come to be divided in
general into the two great classes of dualists and monists. The little
differences which some of these sects insist upon, and upon the authority of
which want to take new names as pure Advaitists, or qualified Advaitists,
and so forth, do not matter much. As a classification, either they are
dualists or monists, and of the sects existing at the present time, some of
them are very new, and others seem to be reproductions of very ancient
sects. The one class I would present by the life and philosophy of Râmânuja,
and the other by Shankarâchârya.
Ramanuja is the leading dualistic philosopher of later India, whom all the
other dualistic sects have followed, directly or indirectly, both in the
substance of their teaching and in the organization of their sects even down
to some of the most minute points of their organization. You will be
astonished if you compare Ramanuja and his work with the other dualistic
Vaishnava sects in India, to see how much they resemble each other in
organization, teaching, and method. There is the great Southern preacher
Madhva Muni, and following him, our great Chaitanya of Bengal who took up
the philosophy of the Madhvas and preached it in Bengal. There are some
other sects also in Southern India, as the qualified dualistic Shaivas. The
Shaivas in most parts of India are Advaitists, except in some portions of
Southern India and in Ceylon. But they also only substitute Shiva for Vishnu
and are Ramanujists in every sense of the term except in the doctrine of the
soul. The followers of Ramanuja hold that the soul is Anu, like a particle,
very small, and the followers of Shankaracharya hold that it is Vibhu,
omnipresent. There have been several non-dualistic sects. It seems that
there have been sects in ancient times which Shankara's movement has
entirely swallowed up and assimilated. You find sometimes a fling at
Shankara himself in some of the commentaries, especially in that of Vijnâna
Bhikshu who, although an Advaitist, attempts to upset the Mâyâvâda of
Shankara. It seems there were schools who did not believe in this Mayavada,
and they went so far as to call Shankara a crypto-Buddhist, Prachchhanna
Bauddha, and they thought this Mayavada was taken from the Buddhists and
brought within the Vedantic fold. However that may be, in modern times the
Advaitists have all ranged themselves under Shankaracharya; and
Shankaracharya and his disciples have been the great preachers of Advaita
both in Southern and in Northern India. The influence of Shankaracharya did
not penetrate much into our country of Bengal and in Kashmir and the Punjab,
but in Southern India the Smârtas are all followers of Shankaracharya, and
with Varanasi as the centre, his influence is simply immense even in many
parts of Northern India.
Now both Shankara and Ramanuja laid aside all claim to originality. Ramanuja
expressly tells us he is only following the great commentary of Bodhâyana.
भगवद् बोधायनकृतां विस्तीर्णां ब्रह्मसूत्रवृत्तिं पूर्वाचार्याः संचिक्षिपुः तन्मतानुसारेण सूत्राक्षराणि व्याख्यास्यन्ते।
— "Ancient teachers abridged that extensive commentary on the Brahma-sutras
which was composed by the Bhagavân Bodhayana; in accordance with their
opinion, the words of the Sutra are explained." That is what Ramanuja says
at the beginning of his commentary, the Shri-Bhâshya. He takes it up and
makes of it a Samkshepa, and that is what we have today. I myself never had
an opportunity of seeing this commentary of Bodhayana. The late Swami
Dayânanda Saraswati wanted to reject every other commentary of the
Vyâsa-Sutras except that of Bodhayana; and although he never lost an
opportunity of having a fling at Ramanuja, he himself could never produce
the Bodhayana. I have sought for it all over India, and never yet have been
able to see it. But Ramanuja is very plain on the point, and he tells us
that he is taking the ideas, and sometimes the very passages out of
Bodhayana, and condensing them into the present Ramanuja Bhashya. It seems
that Shankaracharya was also doing the same. There are a few places in his
Bhashya which mention older commentaries, and when we know that his Guru and
his Guru's Guru had been Vedantists of the same school as he, sometimes corn
more thorough-going, bolder even than Shankara himself on certain points, it
seems pretty plain that he also was not preaching anything very original,
and that even in his Bhashya he himself had been doing the same work that
Ramanuja did with Bodhayana, but from what Bhashya, it cannot be discovered
at the present time.
All these Darshanas that you have ever seen or heard of are based upon
Upanishadic authority. Whenever they want to quote a Shruti, they mean the
Upanishads. They are always quoting the Upanishads. Following the Upanishads
there come other philosophies of India, but every one of them failed in
getting that hold on India which the philosophy of Vyasa got, although the
philosophy of Vyasa is a development out of an older one, the Sankhya, and
every philosophy and every system in India — I mean throughout the world —
owes much to Kapila, perhaps the greatest name in the history of India in
psychological and philosophical lines. The influence of Kapila is everywhere
seen throughout the world. Wherever there is a recognised system of thought,
there you can trace his influence; even if it be thousands of years back,
yet he stands there, the shining, glorious, wonderful Kapila. His psychology
and a good deal of his philosophy have been accepted by all the sects of
India with but very little differences. In our own country, our Naiyâyika
philosophers could not make much impression on the philosophical world of
India. They were too busy with little things like species and genus, and so
forth, and that most cumbersome terminology, which it is a life's work to
study. As such, they were very busy with logic and left philosophy to the
Vedantists, but every one of the Indian philosophic sects in modern times
has adopted the logical terminology of the Naiyayikas of Bengal. Jagadisha,
Gadadhara, and Shiromani are as well known at Nadia as in some of the cities
in Malabar. But the philosophy of Vyasa, the Vyasa-Sutras, is firm-seated
and has attained the permanence of that which it intended to present to men,
the Brahman of the Vedantic side of philosophy. Reason was entirely
subordinated to the Shrutis, and as Shankaracharya declares, Vyasa did not
care to reason at all. His idea in writing the Sutras was just to bring
together, and with one thread to make a garland of the flowers of Vedantic
texts. His Sutras are admitted so far as they are subordinate to the
authority of the Upanishads, and no further.
And, as I have said, all the sects of India now hold these Vyasa-Sutras to
be the great authority, and every new sect in India starts with a fresh
commentary on the Vyasa-Sutras according to its light. The difference
between some of these commentators is sometimes very great, sometimes the
text-torturing is quite disgusting. The Vyasa-Sutras have got the place of
authority, and no one can expect to found a sect in India until he can write
a fresh commentary on the Vyasa-Sutras.
Next in authority is the celebrated Gita. The great glory of Shankaracharya
was his preaching of the Gita. It is one of the greatest works that this
great man did among the many noble works of his noble life — the preaching
of the Gita and writing the most beautiful commentary upon it. And he has
been followed by all founders of the orthodox sects in India, each of whom
has written a commentary on the Gita.
The Upanishads are many, and said to be one hundred and eight, but some
declare them to be still larger in number. Some of them are evidently of a
much later date, as for instance, the Allopanishad in which Allah is praised
and Mohammed is called the Rajasulla. I have been told that this was written
during the reign of Akbar to bring the Hindus and Mohammedans together, and
sometimes they got hold of some word, as Allah, or Illa in the Samhitâs, and
made an Upanishad on it. So in this Allopanishad, Mohammed is the Rajasulla,
whatever that may mean. There are other sectarian Upanishads of the same
species, which you find to be entirely modern, and it has been so easy to
write them, seeing that this language of the Samhitâ portion of the Vedas is
so archaic that there is no grammar to it. Years ago I had an idea of
studying the grammar of the Vedas, and I began with all earnestness to study
Panini and the Mahâbhâshya, but to my surprise I found that the best part of
the Vedic grammar consists only of exceptions to rules. A rule is made, and
after that comes a statement to the effect, "This rule will be an
exception". So you see what an amount of liberty there is for anybody to
write anything, the only safeguard being the dictionary of Yâska. Still, in
this you will find, for the most part, but a large number of synonyms. Given
all that, how easy it is to write any number of Upanishads you please. Just
have a little knowledge of Sanskrit, enough to make words look like the old
archaic words, and you have no fear of grammar. Then you bring in Rajasulla
or any other Sulla you like. In that way many Upanishads have been
manufactured, and I am told that that is being done even now. In some parts
of India, I am perfectly certain, they are trying to manufacture such
Upanishads among the different sects. But among the Upanishads are those,
which, on the face of them, bear the evidence of genuineness, and these have
been taken up by the great commentators and commented upon, especially by
Shankara, followed by Ramanuja and all the rest.
There are one or two more ideas with regard to the Upanishads which I want
to bring to your notice, for these are an ocean of knowledge, and to talk
about the Upanishads, even for an incompetent person like myself, takes
years and not one lecture only. I want, therefore, to bring to your notice
one or two points in the study of the Upanishads. In the first place, they
are the most wonderful poems in the world. If you read the Samhita portion
of the Vedas, you now and then find passages of most marvellous beauty. For
instance, the famous Shloka which describes Chaos —
तम आसीत्तमसा गूढमगे etc. — "When darkness was hidden in
darkness", so on it goes. One reads and feels the wonderful sublimity of the
poetry. Do you mark this that outside of India, and inside also, there have
been attempts at painting the sublime. But outside, it has always been the
infinite in the muscles the external world, the infinite of matter, or of
space. When Milton or Dante, or any other great European poet, either
ancient or modern, wants to paint a picture of the infinite, he tries to
soar outside, to make you feel the infinite through the muscles. That
attempt has been made here also. You find it in the Samhitas, the infinite
of extension most marvellously painted and placed before the readers, such
as has been done nowhere else. Mark that one sentence —
तम आसीत् तमसा गूढम् , — and now mark the description of
darkness by three poets. Take our own Kâlidâsa — "Darkness which can be
penetrated with the point of a needle"; then Milton — "No light but rather
darkness visible"; but come now to the Upanishad, "Darkness was covering
darkness", "Darkness was hidden in darkness". We who live in the tropics can
understand it, the sudden outburst of the monsoon, when in a moment, the
horizon becomes darkened and clouds become covered with more rolling black
clouds. So on, the poem goes; but yet, in the Samhita portion, all these
attempts are external. As everywhere else, the attempts at finding the
solution of the great problems of life have been through the external world.
Just as the Greek mind or the modern European mind wants to find the
solution of life and of all the sacred problems of Being by searching into
the external world. So also did our forefathers, and just as the Europeans
failed, they failed also. But the Western people never made a move more,
they remained there, they failed in the search for the solution of the great
problems of life and death in the external world, and there they remained,
stranded; our forefathers also found it impossible, but were bolder in
declaring the utter helplessness of the senses to find the solution. Nowhere
else was the answer better put than in the Upanishad:
यतो वाचो निवर्तन्ते अप्राप्य मनसा सह।
— "From whence words come back reflected, together with the mind";
न तत्रचक्षुर्गच्छति न वाग्गच्छति।
— "There the eye cannot go, nor can speech reach". There are various
sentences which declare the utter helplessness of the senses, but they did
not stop there; they fell back upon the internal nature of man, they went to
get the answer from their own soul, they became introspective; they gave up
external nature as a failure, as nothing could be done there, as no hope, no
answer could be found; they discovered that dull, dead matter would not give
them truth, and they fell back upon the shining soul of man, and there the
answer was found.
तमेवैकं जानथ आत्मानम् अन्या वाचो विमुञ्चथ। — "Know this Atman alone," they
declared, "give up all other vain words, and hear no other." In the Atman
they found the solution — the greatest of all Atmans, the God, the Lord of
this universe, His relation to the Atman of man, our duty to Him, and
through that our relation to each other. And herein you find the most
sublime poetry in the world. No more is the attempt made to paint this Atman
in the language of matter. Nay, for it they have given up even all positive
language. No more is there any attempt to come to the senses to give them
the idea of the infinite, no more is there an external, dull, dead,
material, spacious, sensuous infinite, but instead of that comes something
which is as fine as even that mentioned in the saying —
न तत्र सूर्यो भाति न चन्द्रतारकं नेमा वेद्युतो भान्ति कुतोऽयमग्निः।
तमेव भान्तमनुभाति सर्वं तस्य भासा सर्वमिदं विभाति॥
What poetry in the world can be more sublime than this! "There the sun cannot illumine, nor the moon, nor the stars, there this flash of lightning cannot illumine; what to speak of this mortal fire!" Such poetry you find nowhere else. Take that most marvellous Upanishad, the Katha. What a wonderful finish, what a most marvellous art displayed in that poem! How wonderfully it opens with that little boy to whom Shraddhâ came, who wanted to see Yama, and how that most marvellous of all teachers, Death himself, teaches him the great lessons of life and death! And what was his quest? To know the secret of death.
The second point that I want you to remember is the perfectly impersonal
character of the Upanishads. Although we find many names, and many speakers,
and many teachers in the Upanishads, not one of them stands as an authority
of the Upanishads, not one verse is based upon the life of any one of them.
These are simply figures like shadows moving in the background, unfelt,
unseen, unrealised, but the real force is in the marvellous, the brilliant,
the effulgent texts of the Upanishads, perfectly impersonal. If twenty
Yâjnavalkyas came and lived and died, it does not matter; the texts are
there. And yet it is against no personality; it is broad and expansive
enough to embrace all the personalities that the world has yet produced, and
all that are yet to come. It has nothing to say against the worship of
persons, or Avataras, or sages. On the other hand, it is always upholding
it. At the same time, it is perfectly impersonal. It is a most marvellous
idea, like the God it preaches, the impersonal idea of the Upanishads. For
the sage, the thinker, the philosopher, for the rationalist, it is as much
impersonal as any modern scientist can wish. And these are our scriptures.
You must remember that what the Bible is to the Christians, what the Koran
is to the Mohammedans, what the Tripitaka is to the Buddhist, what the Zend
Avesta is to the Parsees, these Upanishads are to us. These and nothing but
these are our scriptures. The Purânas, the Tantras, and all the other books,
even the Vyasa-Sutras, are of secondary, tertiary authority, but primary are
the Vedas. Manu, and the Puranas, and all the other books are to be taken so
far as they agree with the authority of the Upanishads, and when they
disagree they are to be rejected without mercy. This we ought to remember
always, but unfortunately for India, at the present time we have forgotten
it. A petty village custom seems now the real authority and not the teaching
of the Upanishads. A petty idea current in a wayside village in Bengal seems
to have the authority of the Vedas, and even something better. And that word
"orthodox", how wonderful its influence! To the villager, the following of
every little bit of the Karma Kanda is the very height of "orthodoxy", and
one who does not do it is told, "Go away, you are no more a Hindu." So there
are, most unfortunately in my motherland, persons who will take up one of
these Tantras and say, that the practice of this Tantra is to be obeyed; he
who does not do so is no more orthodox in his views. Therefore it is better
for us to remember that in the Upanishads is the primary authority, even the
Grihya and Shrauta Sutras are subordinate to the authority of the Vedas.
They are the words of the Rishis, our forefathers, and you have to believe
them if you want to become a Hindu. You may even believe the most peculiar
ideas about the Godhead, but if you deny the authority of the Vedas, you are
a Nâstika. Therein lies the difference between the scriptures of the
Christians or the Buddhists and ours; theirs are all Puranas, and not
scriptures, because they describe the history of the deluge, and the history
of kings and reigning families, and record the lives of great men, and so
on. This is the work of the Puranas, and so far as they agree with the
Vedas, they are good. So far as the Bible and the scriptures of other
nations agree with the Vedas, they are perfectly good, but when they do not
agree, they are no more to be accepted. So with the Koran. There are many
moral teachings in these, and so far as they agree with the Vedas they have
the authority of the Puranas, but no more. The idea is that the Vedas were
never written; the idea is, they never came into existence. I was told once
by a Christian missionary that their scriptures have a historical character,
and therefore are true, to which I replied, "Mine have no historical
character and therefore they are true; yours being historical, they were
evidently made by some man the other day. Yours are man-made and mine are
not; their non-historicity is in their favour." Such is the relation of the
Vedas with all the other scriptures at the present day.
We now come to the teachings of the Upanishads. Various texts are there.
Some are perfectly dualistic, while others are monistic. But there are
certain doctrines which are agreed to by all the different sects of India.
First, there is the doctrine of Samsâra or reincarnation of the soul.
Secondly, they all agree in their psychology; first there is the body,
behind that, what they call the Sukshma Sharira, the mind, and behind that
even, is the Jiva. That is the great difference between Western and Indian
psychology; in the Western psychology the mind is the soul, here it is not.
The Antahkarana, the internal instrument, as the mind is called, is only an
instrument in the hands of that Jiva, through which the Jiva works on the
body or on the external world. Here they all agree, and they all also agree
that this Jiva or Atman, Jivatman as it is called by various sects, is
eternal, without beginning; and that it is going from birth to birth, until
it gets a final release. They all agree in this, and they also all agree in
one other most vital point, which alone marks characteristically, most
prominently, most vitally, the difference between the Indian and the Western
mind, and it is this, that everything is in the soul. There is no
inspiration, but properly speaking, expiration. All powers and all purity
and all greatness — everything is in the soul. The Yogi would tell you that
the Siddhis - Animâ, Laghimâ, and so on — that he wants to attain to are not
to be attained, in the proper sense of the word, but are already there in
the soul; the work is to make them manifest. Patanjali, for instance, would
tell you that even in the lowest worm that crawls under your feet, all the
eightfold Yogi's powers are already existing. The difference has been made
by the body. As soon as it gets a better body, the powers will become
manifest, but they are there.
निमित्तमप्रयोजकं प्रकृतीनां वरणभेदस्तु ततः क्षेत्रिकवत्।
— "Good and bad deeds are not the direct causes in the transformations of
nature, but they act as breakers of obstacles to the evolutions of nature:
as a farmer breaks the obstacles to the course of water, which then runs
down by its own nature." Here Patanjali gives the celebrated example of the
cultivator bringing water into his field from a huge tank somewhere. The
tank is already filled and the water would flood his land in a moment, only
there is a mud-wall between the tank and his field. As soon as the barrier
is broken, in rushes the water out of its own power and force. This mass of
power and purity and perfection is in the soul already. The only difference
is the Âvarana — this veil — that has been cast over it. Once the veil is
removed, the soul attains to purity, and its powers become manifest. This,
you ought to remember, is the great difference between Eastern and Western
thought. Hence you find people teaching such awful doctrines as that we are
all born sinners, and because we do not believe in such awful doctrines we
are all born wicked. They never stop to think that if we are by our very
nature wicked, we can never be good — for how can nature change? If it
changes, it contradicts itself; it is not nature. We ought to remember this.
Here the dualist, and the Advaitist, and all others in India agree.
The next point, which all the sects in India believe in, is God. Of course
their ideas of God will be different. The dualists believe in a Personal
God, and a personal only. I want you to understand this word personal a
little more. This word personal does not mean that God has a body, sits on a
throne somewhere, and rules this world, but means Saguna, with qualities.
There are many descriptions of the Personal God. This Personal God as the
Ruler, the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer of this universe is
believed in by all the sects. The Advaitists believe something more. They
believe in a still higher phase of this Personal God, which is
personal-impersonal. No adjective can illustrate where there is no
qualification, and the Advaitist would not give Him any qualities except the
three —Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss Absolute. This is
what Shankara did. But in the Upanishads themselves you find they penetrate
even further, and say, nothing can be predicated of it except Neti, Neti,
"Not this, Not this".
Here all the different sects of India agree. But taking the dualistic side,
as I have said, I will take Ramanuja as the typical dualist of India, the
great modern representative of the dualistic system. It is a pity that our
people in Bengal know so very little about the great religious leaders in
India, who have been born in other parts of the country; and for the matter
of that, during the whole of the Mohammedan period, with the exception of
our Chaitanya, all the great religious leaders were born in Southern India,
and it is the intellect of Southern India that is really governing India
now; for even Chaitanya belonged to one of these sects, a sect of the
Mâdhvas. According to Ramanuja, these three entities are eternal — God, and
soul, and nature. The souls are eternal, and they will remain eternally
existing, individualised through eternity, and will retain their
individuality all through. Your soul will be different from my soul through
all eternity, says Ramanuja, and so will this nature — which is an existing
fact, as much a fact as the existence of soul or the existence of God —
remain always different. And God is interpenetrating, the essence of the
soul, He is the Antaryâmin. In this sense Ramanuja sometimes thinks that God
is one with the soul, the essence of the soul, and these souls — at the time
of Pralaya, when the whole of nature becomes what he calls Sankuchita,
contracted — become contracted and minute and remain so for a time. And at
the beginning of the next cycle they all come out, according to their past
Karma, and undergo the effect of that Karma. Every action that makes the
natural inborn purity and perfection of the soul get contracted is a bad
action, and every action that makes it come out and expand itself is a good
action, says Ramanuja. Whatever helps to make the Vikâsha of the soul is
good, and whatever makes it Sankuchita is bad. And thus the soul is going
on, expanding or contracting in its actions, till through the grace of God
comes salvation. And that grace comes to all souls, says Ramanuja, that are
pure and struggle for that grace.
There is a celebrated verse in the Shrutis,आहारशुध्दौ सत्त्वशुध्दिः सत्त्वशुध्दौ ध्रुवास्मृतिः
"When the food is pure, then the Sattva becomes pure; when the Sattva is
pure, then the Smriti" — the memory of the Lord, or the memory of our own
perfection — if you are an Advaitist — "becomes truer, steadier, and
absolute". Here is a great discussion. First of all, what is this Sattva? We
know that according to the Sankhya — and it has been admitted by all our
sects of philosophy — the body is composed of three sorts of materials — not
qualities. It is the general idea that Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas are
qualities. Not at all, not qualities but the materials of this universe, and
with Âhâra-shuddhi, when the food is pure, the Sattva material becomes pure.
The one theme of the Vedanta is to get this Sattva. As I have told you, the
soul is already pure and perfect, and it is, according to the Vedanta,
covered up by Rajas and Tamas particles. The Sattva particles are the most
luminous, and the effulgence of the soul penetrates through them as easily
as light through glass. So if the Rajas and Tamas particles go, and leave
the Sattva particles, in this state the power and purity of the soul will
appear, and leave the soul more manifest.
Therefore it is necessary to have this Sattva. And the text says, "When
Ahara becomes pure". Ramanuja takes this word Ahara to mean food, and he has
made it one of the turning points of his philosophy. Not only so, it has
affected the whole of India, and all the different sects. Therefore it is
necessary for us to understand what it means, for that, according to
Ramanuja, is one of the principal factors in our life, Ahara-shuddhi. What
makes food impure? asks Ramanuja. Three sorts of defects make food impure
— first, Jâti-dosha, the defect in the very nature of the class to which the
food belongs, as the smell in onions, garlic, and suchlike. The next is
Âshraya-dosha, the defect in the person from whom the food comes; food
coming from a wicked person will make you impure. I myself have seen many
great sages in India following strictly that advice all their lives. Of
course they had the power to know who brought the food, and even who had
touched the food, and I have seen it in my own life, not once, but hundreds
of times. Then Nimitta-dosha, the defect of impure things or influences
coming in contact with food is another. We had better attend to that a
little more now. It has become too prevalent in India to take food with dirt
and dust and bits of hair in it. If food is taken from which these three
defects have been removed, that makes Sattva-shuddhi, purifies the Sattva.
Religion seems to be a very easy task then. Then every one can have religion
if it comes by eating pure food only. There is none so weak or incompetent
in this world, that I know, who cannot save himself from these defects. Then
comes Shankaracharya, who says this word Ahara means thought collected in
the mind; when that becomes pure, the Sattva becomes pure, and not before
that. You may eat what you like. If food alone would purify the Sattva, then
feed the monkey with milk and rice all its life; would it become a great
Yogi? Then the cows and the deer would be great Yogis. As has been said, "If
it is by bathing much that heaven is reached, the fishes will get to heaven
first. If by eating vegetables a man gets to heaven, the cows and the deer
will get to heaven first."
But what is the solution? Both are necessary. Of course the idea that
Shankaracharya gives us of Ahara is the primary idea. But pure food, no
doubt, helps pure thought; it has an intimate connection; both ought to be
there. But the defect is that in modern India we have forgotten the advice
of Shankaracharya and taken only the "pure food" meaning. That is why people
get mad with me when I say, religion has got into the kitchen; and if you
had been in Madras with me, you would have agreed with me. The Bengalis are
better than that. In Madras they throw away food if anybody looks at it. And
with all this, I do not see that the people are any the better there. If
only eating this and that sort of food and saving it from the looks of this
person and that person would give them perfection, you would expect them all
to be perfect men, which they are not.
Thus, although these are to be combined and linked together to make a
perfect whole, do not put the cart before the horse. There is a cry nowadays
about this and that food and about Varnâshrama, and the Bengalis are the
most vociferous in these cries. I would ask every one of you, what do you
know about this Varnashrama? Where are the four castes today in this
country? Answer me; I do not see the four castes. Just as our Bengali
proverb has it, "A headache without a head", so you want to make this
Varnashrama here. There are not four castes here. I see only the Brâhmin and
the Shudra. If there are the Kshatriyas and the Vaishyas, where are they and
why do not you Brahmins order them to take the Yajnopavita and study the
Vedas, as every Hindu ought to do? And if the Vaishyas and the Kshatriyas do
not exist, but only the Brahmins and the Shudras, the Shastras say that the
Brahmin must not live in a country where there are only Shudras; so depart
bag and baggage! Do you know what the Shastras say about people who have
been eating Mlechchha food and living under a government of the Mlechchhas,
as you have for the past thousand years? Do you know the penance for that?
The penance would be burning oneself with one's own hands. Do you want to
pass as teachers and walk like hypocrisies? If you believe in your Shastras,
burn yourselves first like the one great Brahmin did who went with Alexander
the Great and burnt himself because he thought he had eaten the food of a
Mlechchha. Do like that, and you will see that the whole nation will be at
your feet. You do not believe in your own Shastras and yet want to make
others believe in them. If you think you are not able to do that in this
age, admit your weakness and excuse the weakness of others, take the other
castes up, give them a helping hand, let them study the Vedas and become
just as good Aryans as any other Aryans in the world, and be you likewise
Aryans, you Brahmins of Bengal.
Give up this filthy Vâmâchâra that is killing your country. You have not
seen the other parts of India. When I see how much the Vamachara has entered
our society, I find it a most disgraceful place with all its boast of
culture. These Vamachara sects are honeycombing our society in Bengal. Those
who come out in the daytime and preach most loudly about Âchâra, it is they
who carry on the horrible debauchery at night and are backed by the most
dreadful books. They are ordered by the books to do these things. You who
are of Bengal know it. The Bengali Shastras are the Vamachara Tantras. They
are published by the cart-load, and you poison the minds of your children
with them instead of teaching them your Shrutis. Fathers of Calcutta, do you
not feel ashamed that such horrible stuff as these Vamachara Tantras, with
translations too, should be put into the hands of your boys and girls, and
their minds poisoned, and that they should be brought up with the idea that
these are the Shastras of the Hindus? If you are ashamed, take them away
from your children, and let them read the true Shastras, the Vedas, the
Gita, the Upanishads.
According to the dualistic sects of India, the individual souls remain as
individuals throughout, and God creates the universe out of pre-existing
material only as the efficient cause. According to the Advaitists, on the
other hand, God is both the material and the efficient cause of the
universe. He is not only the Creator of the universe, but He creates it out
of Himself. That is the Advaitist position. There are crude dualistic sects
who believe that this world has been created by God out of Himself, and at
the same time God is eternally separate from the universe, and everything is
eternally subordinate to the Ruler of the universe. There are sects too who
also believe that out of Himself God has evolved this universe, and
individuals in the long run attain to Nirvâna to give up the finite and
become the Infinite. But these sects have disappeared. The one sect of
Advaitists that you see in modern India is composed of the followers of
Shankara. According to Shankara, God is both the material and the efficient
cause through Mâyâ, but not in reality. God has not become this universe;
but the universe is not, and God is. This is one of the highest points to
understand of Advaita Vedanta, this idea of Maya. I am afraid I have no time
to discuss this one most difficult point in our philosophy. Those of you who
are acquainted with Western philosophy will find something very similar in
Kant. But I must warn you, those of you who have studied Professor Max
Müller's writings on Kant, that there is one idea most misleading. It was
Shankara who first found out the idea of the identity of time, space, and
causation with Maya, and I had the good fortune to find one or two passages
in Shankara's commentaries and send them to my friend the Professor. So even
that idea was here in India. Now this is a peculiar theory — this Maya
theory of the Advaita Vedantists. The Brahman is all that exists, but
differentiation has been caused by this Maya. Unity, the one Brahman, is the
ultimate, the goal, and herein is an eternal dissension again between Indian
and Western thought. India has thrown this challenge to the world for
thousands of years, and the challenge has been taken up by different
nations, and the result is that they all succumbed and you live. This is the
challenge that this world is a delusion, that it is all Maya, that whether
you eat off the ground with your fingers or dine off golden plates, whether
you live in palaces and are one of the mightiest monarchs or are the poorest
of beggars, death is the one result; it is all the same, all Maya. That is
the old Indian theme, and again and again nations are springing up trying to
unsay it, to disprove it; becoming great, with enjoyment as their watchword,
power in their hands, they use that power to the utmost, enjoy to the
utmost, and the next moment they die. We stand for ever because we see that
everything is Maya. The children of Maya live for ever, but the children of
enjoyment die.
Here again is another great difference. Just as you find the attempts of
Hegel and Schopenhauer in German philosophy, so you will find the very same
ideas brought forward in ancient India. Fortunately for us, Hegelianism was
nipped in the bud and not allowed to sprout and cast its baneful shoots over
this motherland of ours. Hegel's one idea is that the one, the absolute, is
only chaos, and that the individualized form is the greater. The world is
greater than the non-world, Samsâra is greater than salvation. That is the
one idea, and the more you plunge into this Samsara the more your soul is
covered with the workings of life, the better you are. They say, do you not
see how we build houses, cleanse the streets, enjoy the senses? Ay, behind
that they may hide rancour, misery, horror — behind every bit of that
enjoyment.
On the other hand, our philosophers have from the very first declared that
every manifestation, what you call evolution, is vain, a vain attempt of the
unmanifested to manifest itself. Ay, you the mighty cause of this universe,
trying to reflect yourself in little mud puddles! But after making the
attempt for a time you find out it was all in vain and beat a retreat to the
place from whence you came. This is Vairâgya, or renunciation, and the very
beginning of religion. How can religion or morality begin without
renunciation itself ? The Alpha and Omega is renunciation. "Give up," says
the Veda, "give up." That is the one way, "Give up".न प्रजया धनेन त्यागेनैकेऽमृतत्वमानशुः
— "Neither through wealth, nor through progeny, but by giving up alone that
immortality is to be reached." That is the dictate of the Indian books. Of
course, there have been great givers-up of the world, even sitting on
thrones. But even (King) Janaka himself had to renounce; who was a greater
renouncer than he? But in modern times we all want to be called Janakas!
They are all Janakas (lit. fathers) of children — unclad, ill-fed, miserable
children. The word Janaka can be applied to them in that sense only; they
have none of the shining, Godlike thoughts as the old Janaka had. These are
our modern Janakas! A little less of this Janakism now, and come straight to
the mark! If you can give up, you will have religion. If you cannot, you may
read all the books that are in the world, from East to West, swallow all the
libraries, and become the greatest of Pandits, but if you have Karma Kanda
only, you are nothing; there is no spirituality. Through renunciation alone
this immortality is to be reached. It is the power, the great power, that
cares not even for the universe; then it is that
ब्रह्माण्डम् गोष्पदायते। "The whole universe becomes like a hollow made by a cow's foot."
Renunciation, that is the flag, the banner of India, floating over the
world, the one undying thought which India sends again and again as a
warning to dying races, as a warning to all tyranny, as a warning to
wickedness in the world. Ay, Hindus, let not your hold of that banner go.
Hold it aloft. Even if you are weak and cannot renounce, do not lower the
ideal. Say, "I am weak and cannot renounce the world", but do not try to be
hypocrites, torturing texts, and making specious arguments, and trying to
throw dust in the eyes of people who are ignorant. Do not do that, but own
you are weak. For the idea is great, that of renunciation. What matters it
if millions fail in the attempt, if ten soldiers or even two return
victorious! Blessed be the millions dead! Their blood has bought the
victory. This renunciation is the one ideal throughout the different Vedic
sects except one, and that is the Vallabhâchârya sect in Bombay Presidency,
and most of you are aware what comes where renunciation does not exist. We
want orthodoxy — even the hideously orthodox, even those who smother
themselves with ashes, even those who stand with their hands uplifted. Ay,
we want them, unnatural though they be, for standing for that idea of giving
up, and acting as a warning to the race against succumbing to the effeminate
luxuries that are creeping into India, eating into our very vitals, and
tending to make the whole race a race of hypocrites. We want to have a
little of asceticism. Renunciation conquered India in days of yore, it has
still to conquer India. Still it stands as the greatest and highest of
Indian ideals — this renunciation. The land of Buddha, the land of Ramanuja,
of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the land of renunciation, the land where, from
the days of yore, Karma Kanda was preached against, and even today there are
hundreds who have given up everything, and become Jivanmuktas — ay, will
that land give up its ideals? Certainly not. There may be people whose
brains have become turned by the Western luxurious ideals; there may be
thousands and hundreds of thousands who have drunk deep of enjoyment, this
curse of the West — the senses — the curse of the world; yet for all that,
there will be other thousands in this motherland of mine to whom religion
will ever be a reality, and who will be ever ready to give up without
counting the cost, if need be.
Another ideal very common in all our sects, I want to place before you; it
is also a vast subject. This unique idea that religion is to be realised is
in India alone.नायमात्मा प्रवचनेन लभ्यो न मेधया न बहुना श्रुतेन
— "This Atman is not to be reached by too much talking, nor is it to be
reached by the power of intellect, nor by much study of the scriptures."
Nay, ours is the only scripture in the world that declares, not even by the
study of the scriptures can the Atman be realised — not talks, not
lecturing, none of that, but It is to be realised. It comes from the teacher
to the disciple. When this insight comes to the disciple, everything is
cleared up and realisation follows.
One more idea. There is a peculiar custom in Bengal, which they call
Kula-Guru, or hereditary Guruship. "My father was your Guru, now I shall be
your Guru. My father was the Guru of your father, so shall I be yours." What
is a Guru? Let us go back to the Shrutis — "He who knows the secret of the
Vedas", not bookworms, not grammarians, not Pandits in general, but he who
knows the meaning.
यथा खरश्चन्दनभारवाही भारस्य वेत्ता न तु चन्दनस्य।
— "An ass laden with a load of sandalwood knows only the weight of the wood,
but not its precious qualities"; so are these Pandits. We do not want such.
What can they teach if they have no realisation? When I was a boy here, in
this city of Calcutta, I used to go from place to place in search of
religion, and everywhere I asked the lecturer after hearing very big
lectures, "Have you seen God?" The man was taken aback at the idea of seeing
God; and the only man who told me, "I have", was Ramakrishna Paramahamsa,
and not only so, but he said, "I will put you in the way of seeing Him too".
The Guru is not a man who twists and tortures texts.
वाग्वैखरी शब्दझरी शास्त्रव्याख्यानकौशलं वैदुष्यं विदुषां तव्दद् भुक्तये न तु मुक्तये।
— "Different ways of throwing out words, different ways of explaining texts
of the scriptures, these are for the enjoyment of the learned, not for
freedom." Shrotriya, he who knows the secret of the Shrutis, Avrijina, the
sinless, and Akâmahata, unpierced by desire — he who does not want to make
money by teaching you — he is the Shânta, the Sâdhu, who comes as the spring
which brings the leaves and blossoms to various plants but does not ask
anything from the plant, for its very nature is to do good. It does good and
there it is. Such is the Guru,
तीर्णाः स्वयं भीमभवार्णवं जनानहेतुनान्यानपि तारयन्तः
— "Who has himself crossed this terrible ocean of life, and without any idea
of gain to himself, helps others also to cross the ocean." This is the Guru,
and mark that none else can be a Guru, for
अविद्यायामन्तरे वर्तमानाः स्वयं धीराः पण्डितम्मन्यमानाः। दन्द्रम्यमाणाः परियन्ति मूढाः अन्धेनैव नीयमाना यथान्धाः
— "Themselves steeped in darkness, but in the pride of their hearts,
thinking they know everything, the fools want to help others, and they go
round and round in many crooked ways, staggering to and fro, and thus like
the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch." Thus say the Vedas.
Compare that and your present custom. You are Vedantists, you are very
orthodox, are you not? You are great Hindus and very orthodox. Ay, what I
want to do is to make you more orthodox. The more orthodox you are, the more
sensible; and the more you think of modern orthodoxy, the more foolish you
are. Go back to your old orthodoxy, for in those days every sound that came
from these books, every pulsation, was out of a strong, steady, and sincere
heart; every note was true. After that came degradation in art, in science,
in religion, in everything, national degradation. We have no time to discuss
the causes, but all the books written about that period breathe of the
pestilence — the national decay; instead of vigour, only wails and cries. Go
back, go back to the old days when there was strength and vitality. Be
strong once more, drink deep of this fountain of yore, and that is the only
condition of life in India.
According to the Advaitist, this individuality which we have today is a
delusion. This has been a hard nut to crack all over the world. Forthwith
you tell a man he is not an individual, he is so much afraid that his
individuality, whatever that may be, will be lost! But the Advaitist says
there never has been an individuality, you have been changing every moment
of your life. You were a child and thought in one way, now you are a man and
think another way, again you will be an old man and think differently.
Everybody is changing. If so, where is your individuality? Certainly not in
the body, or in the mind, or in thought. And beyond that is your Atman, and,
says the Advaitist, this Atman is the Brahman Itself. There cannot be two
infinites. There is only one individual and it is infinite. In plain words,
we are rational beings, and we want to reason. And what is reason? More or
less of classification, until you cannot go on any further. And the finite
can only find its ultimate rest when it is classified into the infinite.
Take up a finite thing and go on analysing it, but you will find rest
nowhere until you reach the ultimate or infinite, and that infinite, says
the Advaitist, is what alone exists. Everything else is Maya, nothing else
has real existence; whatever is of existence in any material thing is this
Brahman; we are this Brahman, and the shape and everything else is Maya.
Take away the form and shape, and you and I are all one. But we have to
guard against the word, "I". Generally people say, "If I am the Brahman, why
cannot I do this and that?" But this is using the word in a different sense.
As soon as you think you are bound, no more you are Brahman, the Self, who
wants nothing, whose light is inside. All His pleasures and bliss are
inside; perfectly satisfied with Himself, He wants nothing, expects nothing,
perfectly fearless, perfectly free. That is Brahman. In That we are all one.
Now this seems, therefore, to be the great point of difference between the
dualist and the Advaitist. You find even great commentators like
Shankaracharya making meanings of texts, which, to my mind, sometimes do not
seem to be justified. Sometimes you find Ramanuja dealing with texts in a
way that is not very clear. The idea has been even among our Pandits that
only one of these sects can be true and the rest must be false, although
they have the idea in the Shrutis, the most wonderful idea that India has
yet to give to the world: एकं सव्दिप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति। — "That
which exists is One; sages call It by various names." That has been the
theme, and the working out of the whole of this life-problem of the nation
is the working out of that theme — एकं सव्दिप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति।
Yea, except a very few learned men, I mean, barring a very few spiritual
men, in India, we always forget this. We forget this great idea, and you
will find that there are persons among Pandits — I should think ninety-eight
per cent — who are of opinion that either the Advaitist will be true, or the
Vishishtadvaitist will be true, or the Dvaitist will be true; and if you go
to Varanasi, and sit for five minutes in one of the Ghats there, you will
have demonstration of what I say. You will see a regular bull-fight going on
about these various sects and things.
Thus it remains. Then came one whose life was the explanation, whose life
was the working out of the harmony that is the background of all the
different sects of India, I mean Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. It is his life
that explains that both of these are necessary, that they are like the
geocentric and the heliocentric theories in astronomy. When a child is
taught astronomy, he is taught the geocentric first, and works out similar
ideas of astronomy to the geocentric. But when he comes to finer points of
astronomy, the heliocentric will be necessary, and he will understand it
better. Dualism is the natural idea of the senses; as long as we are bound
by the senses we are bound to see a God who is only Personal, and nothing
but Personal, we are bound to see the world as it is. Says Ramanuja, "So
long as you think you are a body, and you think you are a mind, and you
think you are a Jiva, every act of perception will give you the three —
Soul, and nature, and something as causing both." But yet, at the same time,
even the idea of the body disappears where the mind itself becomes finer and
finer, till it has almost disappeared, when all the different things that
make us fear, make us weak, and bind us down to this body-life have
disappeared. Then and then alone one finds out the truth of that grand old
teaching. What is the teaching?
इहैव तैर्जितः सर्गो येषां साम्ये स्थितं मनः।
निर्दोषं हि समं ब्रह्म तस्माद् ब्रह्मणि ते स्थिताः॥
"Even in this life they have conquered the round of birth and death whose minds are firm-fixed on the sameness of everything, for God is pure and the same to all, and therefore such are said to be living in God."
समं पश्यन् हि सर्वत्रि समवस्थितमीश्वरम्।
न हिनस्त्यात्मनात्मानं ततो याति परां गतिम्॥
"Thus seeing the Lord the same everywhere, he, the sage, does not hurt the Self by the self, and so goes to the highest goal."